Bencher, Inc. of Antioch Illinois announced the sale today of the Bencher Amateur Radio product lines to Vibroplex, LLC of Knoxville, Tennessee. This sale ends Bencher’s presence in the amateur radio field, thus allowing the principals, Jere Benedict, President, and Bob Locher, (W9KNI) to move towards retirement.
The product lines sold include the Bencher BY series of Iambic Paddles, (the world’s best selling iambic paddle, with over 150,000 sold) as well as the ST series of single lever paddles, the Bencher Hex Paddle, the N2DAN Mercury Paddle, and the Bencher RJ series Hand Keys. Also included in the sale are the HK-1 Universal Hook-up kit and the YA-1 Low Pass Filter.
Vibroplex has agreed to honor the manufacturer’s warranties of all covered products, and to offer parts and support for these products as well.
Vibroplex will continue to offer the Bencher products through existing marketing channels.
Vibroplex may be contacted at http://www.vibroplex.com, or at (865) 309-5073.
Jere Benedict and Bob Locher wish to express their gratitude to the amateur radio community for its interest and support since the sale of the first Bencher amateur radio products in the early 1970’s.
The North GA QRP Club gang have added a new annual field event to the amateur radio contest calendar–a field event with an unusual twist. The Peanut Power Sprint is this Sunday, September 29, 2013, from 2000Z to 2200Z.
What’s unusual about this event is that it is open to those operators running QRP, those running more than QRP power, those operating at home, and those operating in the field. Participants will be competing against only those who are in the same class. In addition, both CW and SSB operation are allowed and encouraged.
Operations are allowed only on 15, 20, and 40m. The recommended 40m CW frequency is 7.060MHz, not the usual QRP calling frequency.
Those operators with a “Peanut Power Number” can work anyone; those without a number may work only those with numbers. It’s not too late to request a “Peanut Power Number”.
Personally, I’m looking forward to be operating as Peanut Power #105, “Salted” (5w, portable).
One of the highlights of my trip to the Dayton Hamvention last year was attending evenings at Four Days in May (FDIM), a QRP convention sponsored by the QRP ARCI that rather conveniently coincides with the Dayton Hamvention, which I try to attend annually. Though scheduling makes it difficult for me to attend all of FDIM’s daytime presentations, the camaraderie and innovation one discovers at the evening sessions is wholeheartedly worthwhile.
Last year, I snapped quite a few photos at FDIM which I planned to post following the Hamvention. Unfortunately, shortly after the Hamvention, my laptop began displaying signs of an early demise. In haste, I archived my photos on a portable drive, where they remained buried for a year. I just rediscovered this photographic treasure, and thought I’d share it with readers; looking through them rekindled my enthusiasm for FDIM 2013, which starts next week!
A quick look at FDIM 2012
A great characteristic about FDIM is the array of QRP products offered by QRPers for the community. More often than not, these products are fairly priced, and often in support of the QRP community rather than major profit-making ventures.
For example, the North Georgia QRP Club produces affordable wood stands for QRP rigs. They’re incredibly simple, but fully finished and beautifully designed, just the thing to prop up your QRP portable at the right angle for desktop use.
Speaking of wood products–one vendor last year featured an amazing array of wooden paddle pieces and even custom wooden tuning dimples (spinner knobs) for the Elecraft K2 and K1.
As you can see from the photos, each piece is perfectly finished and has great character, as one might expect of real wood.
Dennis, being a hard-core QRPer, trekked with ham gear in tow; he brought his kits to FDIM:
There were a variety of keys and paddles to be seen, of course; offerings range from the home brewed to gorgeous Italian Begali designs:
One paddle that really caught my attention was QuadraBug, a creation of WB9LPU. What makes this gem stand apart from other “Bugs” is that not only will it form “dits” automatically, but it also forms “dahs.” Truly, an amazing work of engineering. I searched the web for a video of the QuadraBug in action, but found nothing. [UPDATE: Thanks, Yan for finding a video! See video below.] This year, I’ll take a video if I’m fortunate enough to see it again.
Home-brew galore
There were an amazing number of home-brewed projects on display, and even a home-brew contest. I didn’t capture photos of them all, but I did manage to snap a few.
One that really caught my eye (being a shortwave receiver enthusiast) was David Cripe’s (NM0S) version of Hutch’s Radio. The original Hutch’s Radios were built by US and British POW’s in WWII. Built in canteens, often from confiscated parts, these radios gave POWs hope by allowing them to tune in the outside world, via the BBC WS and Voice of America. In the spirit of the original, David challenged himself to build his version prior to FDIM, with original parts of the era, and in “secrecy.” Secrecy? As many of the components had to be purchased from suppliers on eBay, David tried to intercept all of the incoming packages without his wife noticing. His success was brief–alas, his wife discovered the mission–but fun; still, the end result was a very cool piece of historical recreation with a humorous story to match:
Of course, FDIM featured loads of QRP transmitters, receivers and transceivers; here is Dwayne’s (AK4P) 40 meter transceiver, built in a SPAM container:
Terry Young, K4KJP, built a very cool pocket 20 meter transceiver in an Altoids tin:
And Alan Shapiro, NM5S, should have won a prize for the most compact set of CW paddles. These paddles are so small that they can be clamped onto your log book. Much to my surprise, they were amazingly easy to use, and would be a great addition to any field-portable radio:
FDIM 2013
If FDIM 2012 is any indication (yes), this is a mere sampling of the stuff you’ll see at Four Days In May 2013. I encourage you to attend: if nothing else, make a little time either Thursday, Friday or Saturday evening to visit the evening displays at FDIM–they’re free and open to the public.
If you can’t attend, I hope you’ll earmark your calendar for a future date. I do plan to bring my camera again this year and will share some photos. Hopefully, I’ll post them a little earlier this go-around!
Hope to see you at FDIM and the Hamvention. For the third year in a row, I will be representing my charity, Ears To Our World (ETOW), at an inside exhibit at the Hamvention. We should be in booth 601 in the East Hall. Please feel free to stop by and introduce yourself! (And if you feel so inclined, you can even donate a few bucks to our worthy cause.) See you there–!
And I thought my buddy, Mike (K8RAT), was being gastronomically adventurous when he made a homemade single-lever “sideswiper” with a steak knife! Imagine what might happen if the steak knife meets up with this:
Last night, I captured the pirate radio station Dit Dah Radio on 6,935 kHz (+/-) USB. I published the audio on my shortwave radio blog, The SWLing Post, where I post quite a lot of shortwave radio recordings.
I’m well aware that no law-abiding ham radio operator would ever broadcast as a pirate radio station. So this must be a non-ham, right? (OK, fess up!!! Who was it???)
You’ll especially like their CW preamble (or, interval signal, I suppose) which they follow with The Capris’ 1960’s hit, Morse Code of Love. Click here to download, or listen in the embedded player below:
I was able to spend about three hours participating in the ARRL 160 Meter Contest this past weekend. I operated CW-only, using my Elecraft K2 running 5-watts, and my primary antenna was my low 195′ Inverted-L tuned with an LDG Z-11 QRP autotuner.
I concentrated on working new sections but even so managed to make 72 QSOs with stations in 30 sections; this translated into an hourly rate of about 24 QSOs per hour–not bad for QRP into a compromise antenna. I worked stations in the states shown in the map below, plus Ontario. (My station is located in southeastern Ohio.)
Although my primary antenna was my Inverted-L, I also shorted the feedline of my windowline-fed 135′ doublet at the tuner and fed the antenna against ground; this antenna allowed me to make one QSO I couldn’t make with the Inverted-L.
I had been hoping to work a DX station or two and heard but wasn’t able to work just one non-US, non-Canadian station, a station in the Bahamas.
[…]All over the world, ham radio operators and Morse Code enthusiasts beam dot, dash messages straight at the moon, then wait 2.7 seconds for the signal to bounce back. They call these “E.M.E.” transmissions, which stands for “Earth-Moon-Earth” or — more popularly — “moonbouncing.” I suppose it’s fun to smack little beeps against a sleepy rock 239,000 miles away and have those beeps come flying back at you. Plus, it’s easy.
[…]Not so long ago, a Scottish artist, Katie Paterson, turned Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata into Morse code, (yup, you can do that, too) and bounced it off the moon. Some musical phrases got trapped in moon craters and didn’t come back, which she found so intriguing, she put the ricocheted, fragmented Moonlight Sonata on a player piano and you can now see her MoonBounced, Morse-Coded piece being not performed by anyone, the keys going up and down on their own, on YouTube.
I’m a huge fan of Krulwich’s witty science articles and am thoroughly impressed that he brings CW into the popular press. Nevermind his tongue-in-cheek!
PS: As I wrote Robert, I think Artemis would love to hear the “sacred language.”
This coming weekend is the 2012 QRP ARCI Fall QSO Party, one of the most popular contests of the QRP calendar. This year, new entry categories are based on the antenna used; those participating with a simple wire antenna or a vertical won’t be competing against those using beams or other multi-element antennas.
The Fall QSO Party runs from 1200UTC on Saturday the 13th through 2400UTC on Sunday the 14th.
I won’t be competing in the Fall QSO Party to win. Instead, I’ll do as I’ve done several times in the past–I’ll use this event as an opportunity for what might be my last outdoor “field event” of the year. A good friend and I will be spending a few hours at Mt. Gilead State Park in north-central Ohio enjoying what promises to be beautiful fall weather, good friendship, and an opportunity to enjoy CW in the great outdoors.
If you participate in the Fall QSO Party, you are very likely to hear stations participating in the Pennsylvania and Arizona QSO Parties. Here are the rules for these two events:
One of the many hams profiled in Max Cooper’s article: Carl Smith (N4AA), publisher of The DX Magazine (Photo: Mountain Xpress)
I’m very proud of our local free community newspaper, the Mountain Xpress for its article on ham radio. Not only does the article give readership a short primer in the hobby, but it also profiles a variety of local hams–even an 18 year old YL.
This one is worth a read and goes beyond the boiler-plate local articles that usually follow on the heals of Field Day. I’ve included a few clips below:
On a stifling late-June day, a tangle of wires snakes through the open door of the Buncombe County Firefighters’ Training Center. Outside, the sun beats down and the roar of big generators fills the air; indoors, the atmosphere is even thicker, dense with a jarring concoction of radio static, Morse code and urgent voices.
[…]At first glance, the whole endeavor seems anachronistic. In an age of global communication, pervasive cell coverage and hundred-million-member social networks, what’s the attraction of basic, point-to-point radio communication? Who are these people who call each other not by name but by arcane strings of characters? What exactly are they doing?
[…]That fear may be unfounded: Today’s ubiquitous tech appears to be re-energizing the long-standing hobby. Pioneering operators have merged radio (an analog medium) with digital communication, and the Internet gives beginners a broad base of support.
“Amateur radio is very much alive and well,” says Bill Morine (N2COP), North Carolina section manager for the Relay League. “An awful lot of young people are coming out and seeing the merger of technologies between computers and wireless applications.”
Nationwide, there are 700,000 licensed hams — an all-time high, he reports. The licensing process is easy, Morine maintains, and ham radio’s staid image is no longer accurate.
[…]Carl Smith (N4AA) represents the old guard. Licensed in 1954 at age 14, the Air Force veteran and retired electronics salesman has logged more than 70,000 radio contacts, many from his home in Leicester. In ham circles, he’s a big deal: For the past 15 years, he’s published The DX Magazine, a bimonthly journal for serious hams with long-range ambitions.
[…]For some operators, service is ham radio’s primary purpose, and dropping the code requirement has unquestionably attracted many younger licensees. Eighteen-year-old Virginia Todd (KK4BRE), for example, got involved due to radio’s community-service opportunities and usefulness in emergencies.
“We volunteer a lot,” she says. “We did the bike race for Meals on Wheels and the Shut-In Trail Ridge Run.”
Paul Tilley (KK4BRD) says ham radio is just another communications tool he uses as a SKYWARN spotter. In foul weather, Tilley takes to the road in a truck equipped with a rooftop weather station, using his radio to report conditions to the National Weather Service. In remote areas lacking cell coverage, Tilley’s radio has enabled him to give people in the path of a storm time to prepare.
“There are storms that make it past the mountains that don’t appear on the radar at all,” Tilley explains. He’s had some close calls, including a lightning strike that destroyed his radio, but he stresses that he’s not a storm chaser. “Storm chasing in the mountains is extremely dangerous: You can’t see the weather coming.”
Even the most obsessed hams make time for community-service work. When Smith isn’t chasing DX, he heads the Buncombe County Amateur Radio Emergency Service, whose roughly 25 volunteers assist emergency-response agencies when normal communications fail. Because radio requires no infrastructure, it’s often vital in large-scale emergencies.
[…]That’s why emergency power is paramount on Field Day. But though the underlying purpose is serious, the event is also a chance for these operators to have some fun.
Watching Smith work CW is a jaw-dropping experience, and he quickly draws a crowd. Even while talking to those around him, he transmits so fast that the individual dits and dahs are barely discernible. Outside, other hams set up antennas in preparation for an all-nighter.
“This is my favorite day of the year,” says Tonya Campbell (WB0VDK) in between transmissions.
And as night falls, Marc Huennekens (KG4OPM) sets up a station in a tent in the bed of his truck. Using an old, tube-driven radio, he plans to log as many contacts as he can before falling asleep.
Back in the training center, the room is thick with Smith’s rapid-fire code, open-band static and low voices swapping stories. One old-timer recalls how it feels to be hit by lightning — twice.
After 24 grueling hours, the club has logged nearly 1,000 contacts. Smith alone worked 300 stations, transmitting all night and into the next morning. The allure of ham radio, he explains, is equal parts technical endeavor, community service and fellowship.
“Through ham radio,” notes Smith, “I can go anywhere in the world and know somebody and have a friend. I daresay your cellphone can’t do that.”
Today, I watched a fascinating eleven-minute NASA animation depicting key events of NASA’s newest Mars rover, Curiosity, in action.
Does this pattern remind you of something? Yep, the letter “L”. The other tires produce a “J” and “P” on the Martian surface. (Photo: NASA/JPL)
As I watched, I noticed something very peculiar about the tires–right around mark 5:15, one can see a pattern imprinted on them. At first I thought nothing of it, assuming NASA scientists had pondered the perfect pattern for traction and also shedding any trapped rocks or debris.
But–as my curiosity was piqued– a little research on the rover tires revealed this article from TyrePress.com: “Curiosity’s tyres ‘tagging’ Mars” in which the pattern is explained:
Yesterday the Mars Curiosity rover successfully went into action on the surface of the red planet, and the vehicle’s tyre tracks have gained a measure of notoriety. It turns out that Curiosity is ‘tagging’ the surface of Mars as it drives about.
A series of notches included in the track tyre tread is not just a pretty pattern – the notches are in fact Morse Code and spell out the letters ‘JPL’, short for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Curiosity is now busy leaving the laboratory’s initials all over Mars[;] however [this] is not just wanton interplanetary vandalism – the dots and dashes are part of the rover’s visual odometry system, used to estimate changes in position over time.
Brilliant! Not to mention, practical…NASA has just put morse code on the Mars surface!
Perhaps it proves that it’ll be very difficult to do away with morse code. At least, until NASA sends a sweeper or Zen garden raker-rover to Mars.
QRP radios, product announcements, reviews, news and more. Low power amateur radio fun!
Please support QRPer by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. Ads are what helps us stay online. All of our ads are ham radio related--no junk, we promise! Thank you!
Bencher, Inc. of Antioch Illinois announced the sale today of the Bencher Amateur Radio product lines to Vibroplex, LLC of Knoxville, Tennessee. This sale ends Bencher’s presence in the amateur radio field, thus allowing the principals, Jere Benedict, President, and Bob Locher, (W9KNI) to move towards retirement.
Last night, I captured the pirate radio station Dit Dah Radio on 6,935 kHz (+/-) USB. I published the audio on my shortwave radio blog, 
(Source: 
